Do you need an army of Echo speakers?

Amazon Echo speakers have never been my smart speaker of choice, but for many people – like a lot people – they are. Due to the volume of Echo speakers in the world (without puns), when Amazon publishes a new Echo product, it is a kind of big problem – this does not make generation iterative or not.

The same goes for Echo Studio and Echo Dot Max from Amazon, which is starting at $ 220 and $ 100, respectively. I will be honest, I was not exactly seduced by what I saw during the Amazon event, but I did Come and listen to them myself and … they sound pretty well! This is not an exciting impression of a product, but it is the most I have to withdraw with a gadget that I only have to look at someone else use for a limited basis.

The knot of what I was able to experience was based on the presentation of audio improvements between generations. More specifically, I was able to listen to a 5th generation echo point compared to the new Dot Echo Dot and Echo Studio from Amazon, and the experience was predictable. There is a big difference between the 5th generation echo point and the Dot Max echo, the latter putting much more bass and more volume. I can see that the Echo Dot Max is a solid option for someone who wants the advantages of an intelligent speaker with Alexa + but who has a limited space and who always wants an intelligent speaker that is useful for playing music.

The jump between the point of Echo Max and the Echo studio is just as drastic. While the former smart speaker has two pilots and a Woofer, the Echo studio has three, as well as a woofer. The result is a bigger sound with a wider “sound scene”, that is to say that you can hear many more nuances in your music. The Echo studio also has a secret weapon compared to the Echo Dot Max, which is space audio and Dolby Atmos. In a demo after the opening of Amazon, I was able to briefly listen to the Echo studio, and he did a good job to fill a medium room with a sound that looked like what you would get on the maximum echo point. There is certainly more dimensionality compared to the smallest Amazon speaker, and this capacity is still highlighted when you use one of Amazon’s latest features, Alexa Home Theater.

Alexa Home Theater, which Amazon also announced today, allows you to twin several studios Echo Dot Max or Echo Dot (up to five of each) and a subwoofer if you choose to create a spatial house theater system. The result is wild. I was able to experience a few things with the Alexa Home Theater functionality of Amazon, which, in this case, used five Echo studios. The first was space music (Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”), which was fun.

Amazon told me that the song we listened to not A special that was settled by Dolby Atmos specifically For space audio, but it always sounded “3D”, bouncing the sound from one corner of the room to another during the song of the song. I had fairly wild spatial audio experiences in my day, including one inside a maybach at CES, and although it is not as immersive as that, it still seemed to be nuanced and quite high fidelity.

The second experience with Alexa Home Theater was to watch a film (a scene from The player ready), which also seemed decent, even if I did not obtain the same dimension of demo as in the demo of space music. Maybe it was the way people were located in the room, potentially blocking some of the speakers, or maybe the film was simply not as well suited for the configuration, but I did not have the same experience-the sound was always big, But not as 3D as the musical demo.

Anyway, however, I’m not sure that many people use Alexa Home Theater. The idea of ​​buying that many Echo studio speakers for a home theater configuration is … a little too much. At $ 220 pop, you are talking about a $ 1,100 package (if you use Max Five speakers) before tax. For this price, you could get a fairly pleasant house theater system like Klipsch, which, yes, can involve a more complicated configuration process, but also offers a more dedicated home theater experience compared to a bunch of Echo speakers.

A large part of your decision to buy a new Echo speaker or not to depend on your interest in Alexa + and on this front, I did not get a very complete overview. A representative of Amazon demo Alexa + by asking the vocal assistant to find a specific scene in a film (again, The player ready), but I could not test this feature by myself, so I can’t tell you if it works as planned. Without a good reading on the functioning of Alexa +, I can at least tell you that the echo equipment feels upgraded, so if you are looking for a boost to volume, bass and 3D sound, it is worth considering an upgrade. However, if you are satisfied with your current Echo speakers, I don’t think you have to rush and buy a new black orb to shout. We all know that they will be on sale for Prime Day soon anyway.

The two Echo devices are available for pre -order today, and American customers get Alexa + in early access. The Echo Dot Max and Echo Studio will both be available for purchase on October 29.